ABSTRACT

The Mansfield initiative to withdraw substantial numbers of troops from Germany seemed to have reached its peak and to have crested with the defeat in the Senate in 1973. Though the Germans as well as the Americans harbored latent fears that the new All Volunteer Force regime might well produce larger problems than it solved, a new regime always brings hope for a new day, a better future. The Germans feared that reports of a rising tide of anti-Americanism in Germany would fuel the Mansfield drive in Congress. The American negotiators feared not only the effects of the Mansfield initiative but also the effects on German public opinion of ever escalating demands on the German treasury for American troops. The German government strenuously opposed the Mansfield initiative. German leaders feared, perhaps more than anything else, a withdrawal of the United States into a new period of isolationism, leaving the Europeans to fend for them.